Friday, July 07, 2006

Thinking again, it seems

There are three magazines I buy on a regular basis: Metropolis, dwell, and Period House.

I once asked an instructor of mine what magazine I should subscribe to if I had to pick only one, and he said Metropolis because not only is it cheap, it delves into interior design and culture as well. So that is why I read that.

I read dwell because it's essentially another version of Metropolis, offering almost exactly the same thing.

Period House (which does not seem to have a website I could easily Google) is a light antidote to the first two magazines, which like most architecture magazines these days are heavy inclined to what I term the Neo-Modernist aesthetic. Period House is a UK publication that costs me almost as much as dwell and Metropolis combined. I don't consider it a "serious" architectural magazine - it's audience isn't explicitly designers - I think of it as rather more of an interior design magazine for homeowners. So why am I doling out the cash?

Because it showcases reader's period houses - Tudors and 13th century French townhouses - with excellent photographs and descriptions of the remodeling. There is an Ask the Expert section in the back where readers write in about their thatching, etc. It covers the things, basically, that I can't get enough of, and that mainstream architecture magazines often fail to address: The Old.